Some startups are looking for rank and file individual contributors (IC's), not entrepreneurs -- people who identify needs and take initiative to address them. Maybe the founders are entrepreneurs, but they hire a VP eng who hires a eng manager who doesn't have the entrepreneurial mindset when building out his team. Or maybe engineering decides to adopt scrum and doesn't realize this can clash with the initiative of IC's. Or maybe the startup founders want to have lots of control that leads to micromanaging. At these startups, the eng IC is asked to implement a UI that exactly matches the mock ups from a designer or is asked to build a new feature that a product person spec'd out. Sometimes, the eng IC is in an eng team and is silo'd from the design and product teams and doesn't interact with the customer. The eng IC is discouraged from taking their own initiative (to build internal tools, improve the product performance, improve security, etc) because they need to support the product team by quickly building specific features. Sometimes the eng IC is assumed to only care about coding and not have the success of the company in mind. If you are an entrepreneur, make sure your company is trying to fill their positions with entrepreneurs. Tagging Netflix because they look for entrepreneurs.
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There was a little period of history where people were really fetishizing startups. I hope thatās over now. They pay shit. No one ever gets the paper money. And yes, youāre right - they work you like a dog, and itās just the same type of work as at a big company, except you have less time to do it and donāt get paid as much.
I'm happy you are saying this because after doing two startups that are now stuck in an unlimited amount of rounds and dilution from which I will probably never see the paper money, I'm here to tell everyone that startups don't make sense unless you are in the founders. Founder's jobs is to create koolaid for employees so they accept to get underpaid and get equity that doesn't make any sense. Only join a startup If you think the experience and the fun part is ok for you to lose 100k$+ a year
Depends on the startup. Some unicorns pay really well. Also in many cases you get to work on new tech that is harder (or impossible) to work on in a larger company. There's always the chance the startup exits or IPOs, and while that's unlikely, I think there are other reasons for joining a startup.